By the Iowa Sea

By the Iowa Sea
Author: Joe Blair
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1451636067

Recounts the author's transformation from an idealistic, freedom-loving youth to a jaded and financially struggling father of four and how a catastrophic flood helped him to reconnect with the faith and courage of his childhood.

Beyond the Sea

Beyond the Sea
Author: Felan Parker
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2018-11-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0773555560

The Bioshock series looms large in the industry and culture of video games for its ambitious incorporation of high-minded philosophical questions and retro-futuristic aesthetics into the ultraviolent first-person shooter genre. Beyond the Sea marks ten years since the release of the original game with an interdisciplinary collection of essays on Bioshock, Bioshock 2, and Bioshock Infinite. Simultaneously lauded as landmarks in the artistic growth of the medium and criticized for their compromised vision and politics, the Bioshock games have been the subject of significant scholarly and critical discussion. Moving past well-trodden debates, Beyond the Sea broadens the conversation by putting video games in dialogue with a diverse range of other disciplines and cultural forms, from parenting psychology to post-humanism, from Thomas Pynchon to German expressionist cinema. Offering bold new perspectives on a canonical series, Beyond the Sea is a timely contribution to our understanding of the aesthetics, the industry, and the culture of video games. Contributors include Daniel Ante-Contreras (Miracosta), Luke Arnott (Western Ontario), Betsy Brey (Waterloo), Patrick Brown (Iowa), Michael Fuchs (Graz), Jamie Henthorn (Catawba), Brendan Keogh (Queensland), Cameron Kunzelman (Georgia), Cody Mejeur (Michigan State), Matthew Thomas Payne (Notre Dame), Gareth Schott (Waikato), Karen Schrier (Marist), Sarah Stang (York/Ryerson), Sarah Thorne (Carleton), John Vanderhoef (California State, Dominguez Hills), Matthew Wysocki (Flagler), Jordan R. Youngblood (Eastern Connecticut State), and Sarah Zaidan (Emerson).

A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea

A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea
Author: Dina Nayeri
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2013-01-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 110160199X

From the author of Refuge, a magical novel about a young Iranian woman lifted from grief by her powerful imagination and love of Western culture. Growing up in a small rice-farming village in 1980s Iran, eleven-year-old Saba Hafezi and her twin sister, Mahtab, are captivated by America. They keep lists of English words and collect illegal Life magazines, television shows, and rock music. So when her mother and sister disappear, leaving Saba and her father alone in Iran, Saba is certain that they have moved to America without her. But her parents have taught her that “all fate is written in the blood,” and that twins will live the same life, even if separated by land and sea. As she grows up in the warmth and community of her local village, falls in and out of love, and struggles with the limited possibilities in post-revolutionary Iran, Saba envisions that there is another way for her story to unfold. Somewhere, it must be that her sister is living the Western version of this life. And where Saba’s world has all the grit and brutality of real life under the new Islamic regime, her sister’s experience gives her a freedom and control that Saba can only dream of. Filled with a colorful cast of characters and presented in a bewitching voice that mingles the rhythms of Eastern storytelling with modern Western prose, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is a tale about memory and the importance of controlling one’s own fate.

Two If by Sea

Two If by Sea
Author: Jacquelyn Mitchard
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2017-03-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501115588

Joining the volunteer rescue effort in Brisbane after the Christmas Eve tsunami, American expat Frank Mercy is transformed by his rescue of a telepathic little boy, who he illegally takes back with him to America and struggles to protect.

Deep Nature

Deep Nature
Author: John Pearson
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Total Pages: 119
Release: 2009-10
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1587298813

Photographers Linda and Robert Scarth have an incredible eye for that magic moment when small becomes beautiful. Matched with patience and skill, their eye for magic produces dazzling images of Iowa nature up close. Revealing the miniature beauties hidden among the patches of prairie, woodland, and wetland that remain in Iowa’s sadly overdeveloped landscape, the seventy-five color photographs in Deep Nature give us a breathtaking cross section of the state’s smallest inhabitants. The Scarths’ close-up images of showy orchis and northern monkshood, great spangled fritillary and painted lady, red-breasted nuthatch and eastern wood-pewee, ornate box turtle and gray treefrog, big bluestem and cotton-grass, and many other natural wonders look more like paintings than photographs. Beginning with an iridescent fly hovering over a neon-purple fringed gentian and ending with their iconic image of coneflowers refracted in dewdrops, they have created a sparkling jewelbox of images that will make us look at the small world around us with renewed appreciation. Attending to the small things in the fabric of nature is the Scarths’ source of artistic inspiration. Taking Walt Whitman’s “every leaf is a miracle” as their beginning, they celebrate not only each leaf but each feather, insect, dewdrop, flower, lichen, and intricate organism in the evolving web of life.

Outside Is the Ocean

Outside Is the Ocean
Author: Matthew Lansburgh
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2017-10-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1609385276

Three days after her twentieth birthday, a young woman who grew up in Germany during World War II crosses the Atlantic to start a new life. Outside Is the Ocean traces Heike’s struggle to find love and happiness in America. After two marriages and a troubled relationship with her son, Heike adopts a disabled child from Russia, a strong-willed girl named Galina, who Heike hopes will give her the affection and companionship she craves. As Galina grows up, Heike’s grasp on reality frays, and she writes a series of letters to the son she thinks has abandoned her forever. It isn’t until Heike’s death that her son finds these letters and realizes how skewed his mother’s perceptions actually were.

Sea Creatures

Sea Creatures
Author: Susanna Daniel
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2013-07-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062219626

In Sea Creatures, a riveting domestic drama by Susanna Daniel, a mother must make the unthinkable choice between her husband and her son. When Georgia Qullian returns to her hometown of Miami, her toddler and husband in tow, she is hoping for a fresh start. They have left Illinois trailing scandal and disappointment in their wake, fallout from her husband’s severe sleep disorder. For months, their three-year-old son has refused to speak a word. On a whim, Georgia takes a job as an errand runner for a reclusive artist and is surprised at how her life changes dramatically. But soon the family’s challenges return, more complicated than before. Late that summer, as a hurricane bears down on South Florida, Georgia must face the fact that her decisions have put her only child in grave danger. Sea Creatures is a mesmerizing exploration of the high stakes of marriage and parenthood.

Autumn by the Sea

Autumn by the Sea
Author: Melissa Tagg
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2021-09-28
Genre:
ISBN: 9780997964240

The Book of Babel

The Book of Babel
Author: Nigel Lewis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2003-11
Genre:
ISBN: 9780756790189

This extended essay-lexicon celebrates the creative confusion of the world's languages as they interact in overheard echoicÓ words, muddled popular etymologies, & the misunderstandings among cultures. This book examines the amazing & amusing category mistakesÓ of metaphor. Why are whitecapped waves white horsesÓ in English, sheepÓ in French, & little goatsÓ in Spanish? What is the connection between birds nests, baskets, & friendship? Eggs & eyes? Focuses on a single location to show how multiple meanings arose from the mixed & immemorial activities of peasant life. Shows ancient patterns of perception & prejudice at work as well as the resourceful power of the mind to reap a rich crop of meaning from a small seedcorn of words.